


Burn

by ziyazu



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, F/M, Fire, M/M, Magical Lakes, Mutilple Main Character Death, The Only Ones Left Alive, Unexplained magical circumstances, Werewolf!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 18:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziyazu/pseuds/ziyazu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bright flashes of the ambulance and the police cruisers beat back the darkness – there are no fire trucks, of course there aren't – and for a few heartbeats everything is okay. Everything is under control. They're going to be fine.</p><p>Stiles should know by now that they're never going to be fine ever, ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn

**Author's Note:**

> If you have issues with wildfires, with fire in general, or with parental death, probably one to avoid.

When they break from the woods coughing and spluttering, almost instantly the comforting swarm of emergency personnel surrounds them, and it's like the exhale of a breath neither of them knew they could possibly have been holding all this time. The bright flashes of the ambulance and the police cruisers beat back the darkness – there are no fire trucks, of course there aren't – and for a few heartbeats everything is okay. Everything is under control. They're going to be fine.

Stiles should know by now that they're never going to be fine ever, ever again.

His aching feet get dragged to a spot nearby, actually identical but supposedly 'better', according to some emergently trained person. He's wrapped in one of those crinkly silver blankets for shock, and about five people are asking him questions and trying to get him to sit on the wet asphalt of the parking lot before his legs collapse, which, he considers absently, would be unfortunate. He knows he'll need to keep running soon. They can't stop yet. No one can stop. None of them should be here.

He wonders who called them all here, and when his brain supplies, _Derek_ , quiet horror at what his plan must be fills him like a cold pool of ice water. He grits his teeth against the whirl of it, filling him up to freeze him solid, and he would so like to freeze after all the burning, but he can’t. Not yet.

He knows it makes sense. What’s coming – it wants lives. These will do. And it might be far enough from the town to save the evacuation centers there. Kids from all over the area, the Red Cross shelters, all the evacuees they keep hearing are heading there – that’s what matters now. An ambulance crew, a few police officers, that’s nothing.  

Well. Comparatively.

He stares blankly into the face of the young policewoman in front of him, and he's grateful that despite a lifetime as the Sherriff’s son, she's someone he doesn't know. He takes in her far-more-than-professionally-worried expression, her growing frustration at his total lack of response, the bewildered, terrified exhaustion they see whenever they run across normal people in this hellish scramble. Her hair had been pulled back in such a rush at some point that she caught an earring and swept it up as well. He has a brief, tired moment of jealously for the luxury of the time she had had to stop and put them on. He can’t even remember a time like that anymore.

He thinks about how he should be telling her, should be screaming at her, to run, to try to save her life, to try to save her family the agony he lives with, the agony he sees etched on his father's face in his mind's eye that day – probably tomorrow, if there's still anyone left alive – when he finally has to stand next to Stiles' body in the goddamn morgue.

Well. Not stand. Standing’s hard to do, when your legs have been burned away. And you’re in a coma. 

And with that punch of fresh pain, Stiles just breathes. Sounds slowly fade back in, and he wishes they wouldn't. For so long it's just been them, running, running and breathing, and trying to keep doing both as long as they can, trying to keep ahead of the other sounds. All of today, most of yesterday… and what happened before yesterday? He can’t remember anymore. It's better not to try.

He lifts his eyes from a shiny patch on the wet ground and stares almost directly into Lydia's eyes. She's watching him, glazed, but with that same familiar strained, alert terror he knows his face has too. It helps, that terror, helps to see it, to feel it. He’s seen too many faces with just blank surrender, the last few days. Too many more just blank, eyes gone still forever.

He nods at the silent question glinting in hers, and they both swallow, hard. They’ve stayed too long, let themselves get entangled here. It must be nearby. If they leave now, there might be a chance. They're so close, after so long. The tight huddle of emergency crews and vehicles might be enough to slow it - stop it even - for a little while. If he and Lydia can just get to Derek, can just get the talisman to Derek - he grips it in his fist and her eyes flick down to it and then back up to his, suddenly steely, full of cool determination.

Oh Lydia.

Her hair in the flashing lights is a shining aura of red and blue and purple light, and everything in him clenches because _No_ and _Not Lydia_ has been his guiding hand in all of this, ever since Scott. Since then, of everyone who has gone, Isaac and Cora, Erica and Boyd, Allison and Danny, Scott's Mom, Deaton, Morrell, even Peter, of everyone who has fallen behind them, days or weeks ago now, _No, Not Lydia_ has been the only emotion he's let himself feel. It scours through him again, rough and ragged and rageful, and he tenses with it, shoots her a look. She misses it.

Instead she’s pursing her lips, brow furrowed, her eyes fixed searchingly on the trees they’ve just run through, and his widen as he turns to stare with her, pushing the protesting policewoman behind him without hearing her.  Out of the corner of his eye he sees Lydia raise her head as she sniffs the air along with him.

 _Fuck_.

They have to go now.

In the end he's not sure how they get away, not when they're the entire focus of the emergency crews to begin with, and when they're fading into black night and silent woodland with only shouts and then screams behind them, he spares a moment or two of straining muscles and familiarly shredded lungs to blink back the hot bile rising in him at the knowledge of what – of _who_ – they just sacrificed. Stiles squeezes his hand in anger, punches the sharp points of the talisman harder into the palm of his hand, feels a drop or two of blood drip down his fingers, and hates that he's glad his Dad is already out of this fight.

 _Just keep breathing_.

Lydia pants, sometimes beside him, sometimes a little behind, and neither of them stop. Stopping is not an option. Stiles knows these woods better than she does, though, has had more practice hurtling at sprint-speed over rocks and streams and logs and inclines. When Lydia stumbles, she doesn't go down, but the hitch in her breathing stabs him each time, and every so often he reaches out for her hand in the darkness, grabs hold tight, and pulls her as he runs. She won't last much longer, he knows that. It's been hours since they last ate, a few days since they’ve really slept. He would have given up long ago if not for her, though, so he keeps going, keeps trying to remember which part of the woods this is, if they're close, if they're even _close,_ trying to push down his rising panic at the realisation that he has no idea.

He’s lived here all his life, they’ve been fighting for god knows how long to get back here, to get back to their alpha, even though neither of them are wolves, even though all their wolves fell first, their best hope greedily devoured, and _he has no idea where they are_.

He can’t let himself feel helpless, though, has to trust in the plan, changed too many times and threadbare with compromises, with friends left behind and thick dark smoke always shrouding the horizon. The moon lifts into the sky, its light cold and clear, flickering through the trees around them, and they run.

They _must_ be close. _Just keep breathing_.

In, out. In, out. Feet pounding on the uneven, leaf-strewen ground. Trees and trees and trees and trees and _nothing familiar_ , where the _hell_ are they, and _trees_ and-

The howl takes both of them so much by surprise that they laugh, and even as she stumbles again – no rocks or logs this time, just sheer exhaustion – Lydia catches Stiles' eye and beams at him.

_Derek._

In a whirl of black hurtling speed he finds them, and after a beat where he waits, expecting the others to run up, expecting anyone else to be left except for these two, except for the useless humans, he looks at Stiles, and Stiles has to shake his head. Derek’s face breaks, just that little bit that means so much, and before Stiles can do anything he’s sprinting, disappearing into the trees, and they try to keep up.

"Just over the ridge," he yells behind him, and they struggle up it, following his quick strides.

The lake is black under the winter stars when they reach the top, spread out below them like a vast pool of ink. The trees are thin up here, and they stop next to Derek as he listens behind them, eyes searching, nose testing the breeze. Stiles and Lydia stare at the dark water, chests heaving, eyes wide, and Lydia swallows. “It’s really here.”

Stiles always thought that when it came to this – if they ever got this far – that he'd be relieved. He's not. He's numb.

He puts a shaking hand on Lydia's back, and she leans into him, her hair blowing gently across his chin in the faint breeze. He smoothes it and tucks it behind her ear, an automatic gesture so out of the past, so normal and happy that both of them wince, even though he’s never done that before, not with her. And then Derek says, with the intensity Stiles has forgotten he’s capable of, " _Shit_."

In one step he's at Stiles' side, grabbing his wrist, and he just says, "Now." Stiles doesn't have time to even nod before he feels sharp teeth snap through his skin, slicing tendons, biting into bone with Derek’s urgency. He cries out, can't help it, and Lydia curls into him, holds her arm out next, even though all of them know she won't survive it this time. They have no choice. Stiles more hears than sees it happen in the dim light, the crunching sound sinking into his memory as he clutches her close to him, and then they're all hurtling down the steep slope, faster than he would have thought possible. He keeps his feet somehow, miraculously, some strange luck helping him stay upright, and he knows that werewolf powers don't kick in this fast but he burned through all his adrenaline ages ago and he'll take whatever this is, whatever he can get.

Derek is a dozen steps ahead of them when he splashes into the cold water up to his knees, hands outstretched for them, and when they reach him Stiles smears the talisman roughly over his own bite, over Lydia's as she writhes in pain, and then over Derek's proffered arm, newly bitten as they splashed to him, seconds ago.

He takes it from Stiles, claws cutting in his rush, and hurls it as far as he can into the center of the lake, none of them knowing how far it needs to go, if three is really enough, if it even counts when they’re only just bitten and one of them is immune and already fainting in Stiles' arms as it poisons her more with every heartbeat.

And then, nothing. Pain. Darkness – the moon is hidden again, lingering behind the tree-lined ridge behind them. Desperate breaths and desperate pleas for Lydia to _hold on, hold on, please Lydia, not now, come on, please Lydia, PLEASE_. Derek standing so still that Stiles looks up and wildly thinks, as he's never thought through all of this, not when everyone was dying around him, that he's alone, that no one else is going to be left. He chokes, and Derek hears, understands, because his red eyes glow at Stiles suddenly, and his soft growl echoes between them. Stiles breathes. He's not alone.

They both look to the ridge, waiting to see, to hear, to smell. Nothing.

"Did it work?"

Derek shakes his head. He doesn’t know yet.

Stiles can’t stand upright anymore, so he lays Lydia down in the water, sits with her in his arms like he'd sat with Scott, brushes her hair back from her strangely peaceful face. She's still breathing, but shallowly. Her pale white arm has fallen away from him, lake water just lapping the bite mark, brutally torn into her soft flesh and already going black and rotten from whatever it is that Lydia is, from whatever wants her dead more than it wants her to be a wolf. He wishes he already had the power to take pain away. He knows now it's the only thing he might have been able to save her from.

_Not Lydia._

He rubs his thumb over her cheek, still red from running but icy-cold now, and he watches as her chest slows, as it stutters. He whispers, "We love you, Lydia," just before it stops, and he hopes she hears him, hopes she knows he means everyone. He wishes he knew how to believe in anything that might mean they're all together now. He wishes that the thought of them all together again without him didn't make his chest ache worse than when it had been bursting just a moment ago, after miles and miles of running.

Derek still hasn't moved. They wait.

Stiles closes his eyes to Lydia’s still, dead face and hopes, though he's lost track of what to hope for, lost that a long time ago. For longer than he can remember it's just been hoping to make it to the next step, hoping to survive each new disaster, hoping someone was left to bury the friends they left behind.

Hoping the burning hasn't consumed them the way it's consumed so much.

Stiles raises his head from Lydia's limp form, raises his eyes and looks at the trees. _Of course_ , he thinks, some strange part of him wanting to laugh. _Of course_ it's these woods that are left, that hide the weird magical lake, that have given Beacon Hills the only fighting chance in the state, on most of the west coast. THEIR woods. The only ones, now. Well, maybe somewhere, over the Rockies... nowhere they've heard from. Not for a long while.

He hopes, though.

The air is fresh, he realizes, his breath finally slowing. It’s clear here. He doesn’t know when he last breathed clear air. This final run they had to do was so much easier without the char and the smoke filling their eyes, their throats. It’s probably the only way they did it. They should never have been able to make it so far. If they hadn’t stopped unexpectedly, if Derek hadn’t had the idea to get the emergency crews there to stall it, probably neither of them would have.

He tries not to think of the woman who helped him in the parking lot, of the pile of twisted, smoking black metal that must be there now, of the burnt bodies they've seen everywhere as they've run these past few days, trying to beat the fire here, trying to trick it into going elsewhere, outrun it when they could, get around its reaching fingers and get the talisman back to Derek and the lake.

The lake.

He glances around at it, tiny waves hitting the small of his back as he sits on the rocky bottom, as regular as they are impossible. He’s glad it was here, if he can be glad about anything right now. It looks like any other lake, which should be odd, considering it was never here before tonight. He supposes he should also try to be glad that the timing Lydia worked out was right. Something about the moon, and the alignment of Saturn? Oh Lydia.

Idly he scoops some water and tries to wash one of her hands, nearly black from… somewhere. It was only a few hours ago, maybe yesterday. Somewhere already burned. Had he dropped the talisman? Had she seen someone she knew, withered and burnt, and tried to cover them? Maybe. It doesn't matter now.

He looks up at Derek, still standing, still waiting, and he hesitates. "How... how long?" he asks, his voice ragged and harsh, and for once he's not afraid of being answered by the stony silence that means even asking is pointless, because they’re all going to die anyways.

There isn't anyone else left to die. It's just them. They hardly count.

Derek stirs, and then says, as if he can’t believe it, "I can't hear it. _I_ _can’t smell it_." Stiles stares at him.

"What? But-"

Derek looks at him, eyes dim and human and hollow. "I know."

They sit, waiting, neither of them moving, for long minutes. Stiles feels his whole body begin to shake with the cold, soaked to the skin, arms still wrapped around Lydia, and he doesn't fight it. He doesn't have any fight left. He sags, slightly, and feels his hands go numb.

A bird calls, suddenly, and they both start. Derek turns that direction, and the bird calls again. An owl. He – Stiles can't believe this – Derek laughs, softly. "Mating call," he says. Farther away in the woods, another one answers it.

Stiles stands then, hauling Lydia's dripping body into his arms and cradling it against his chest, arms beyond their strength but held tight by sheer willpower.

"It worked?" he asks, and is surprised to find he hardly cares. Derek looks at him, sidelong, and nods cautiously. "Think so."

They splash back through the icy water to the shore a few meters away, and Stiles lays Lydia down as gently as he can, the clumsy fingers of his good hand adjusting her hair, straightening her clothes, curling under her head to turn her face to the stars. There's no smoke now, obscuring them. She should see the stars.

They leave her there. They know no one will come to bury her, that the valley and the lake simply won't exist again tomorrow. She deserves that peace, at least. Without speaking, they trudge up the steep ridge again, and he only looks back once to see her there, a dark smudge on the lakeshore, nearly lost to sight, her hair a faint glimmer of strawberry blonde in the starlight.

 _Goodbye, Lydia_.

At the top of the ridge they stop again, aways higher up from where Derek bit them, and Stiles curls his injured arm to his chest, feels the bite throb with the blood that's rushed back into his veins on the climb. He shivers in his wet clothes, grudgingly grateful for the scant warmth the pain gives him, for the piercing ache of his leg muscles as they protest, exhausted. He takes a deep breath, steadying himself, and looks around, surprised to see that up here they’re above the main mass of trees.

His gaze shoots to the horizon first, scanning for the red glow his whole body is tensed to see, and he doesn’t find it. Derek is looking too, with senses much more far-reaching than Stiles’, and he shakes his head, slowly. Nothing. It should have devoured the entire town by now, supernatural flames roaring with impossible heat, prowling for lives, alive and chasing and burning. Instead, there’s nothing.

Somehow, it worked.

Stiles doesn’t really know what that means anymore, so he turns to peer down at the scattered, piecemeal lights below them, yellow, just pricking the darkness, shining out beyond all reason. He traces the familiar, dim streets with his eyes; they must only have gotten emergency generators up and running after the last power link was cut a few days ago. There aren’t many, clearly. One for the main Red Cross centre, maybe two for the school, a few for the hospital.

He thinks of his Dad in the hospital, of the nurse's voice on the phone, breaking the news – was it sometime last week? There's nothing to go back for now, he knows. His Dad isn’t waking up. There’s no point in saying goodbye all over again. He’s done that enough. He sighs, traitorously closed throat turning it into a choking noise he can’t quite smother.

Derek looks at him then, and holds out a hand towards his arm. Stiles grits his teeth and extends it for him, and he bends over it, sniffing the bite, nostrils flaring. He growls, low in his throat, nods, and then he’s pulling Stiles against him, in front of him, fingers curling possessively around his hips. He’s warm against Stiles’ back, solid and strong, and Stiles’ breath hitches again in a new way as Derek’s lips find the chilled, sweat-damp skin under Stiles’ ear. They breathe together for a moment, lungs synchronizing, before Stiles feels Derek’s lips moving again.

"Pack," he says, and Stiles feels himself relaxing involuntarily into the word, into the low rumble of the voice, into Derek’s hands as they slide under his shirt, warmth burning across his stomach. He tries to focus. _Pack_.

"We need one?" He winces, unable to shoulder the thought of new people, his chest punched full of holes where the old ones have been torn out. His bite stings, and he swallows, hard. Derek holds him tighter, his hair brushing against Stiles' neck as he shakes his head, chucks his chin over Stiles’ shoulder.

"No. We are one.”

Oh. Stiles nods, relieved, as he breathes in, enjoying the cold, clean air wafting up from the trees around them.

Then his eyes go wide, and he exhales suddenly in a rush to breathe in again, desperately, deeply, and part of him expands, filled with scents he’s never smelled, scents he never knew existed. He blinks, startled, as some strange mixture of panic and grief and exhaustion allows the fierce magic to surge through him, to pour into him from the inside, to turn him far sooner than it should.

He gasps and trembles with the sudden energy, blood pulsing warm, heart skipping to beat quicker, stronger, and he knows without looking that his wrist is smooth, clear skin now, the bite only a memory.

Derek feels the change, rumbles a pleased, surprised welcome, and Stiles turns into it, newly amber eyes meeting glowing blood red. He knows instinctively to tilt his head, bare his throat, let Derek nuzzle his neck again and breathe in the scent of new family, of new pack. Lips find the tendon, lengthening teeth scraping gently, softly, and Stiles closes his eyes, a smile tugging at his lips unbidden, fingers sliding into beltloops to pull the alpha closer. _His_ alpha, now, indisputably.

They stand together in the woods, moon rising above them, clouded breath mingling closely in the sharp light. He sees the blue-lit curve of Derek’s answering smile, dangerous and familiar, and as he leans in to meet it, Stiles feels something in him howl.


End file.
